San Antonio Tea Party Goes Local

Contrary to what some may think, the Tea Party is alive and well in San Antonio. While the SATP continues to focus on national issues such the $15 trillion debt and Obamacare, and on state issues such as protecting the Rainy Day Fund and controlling state spending. However, the group has also taken a new direction by focusing on local issues.

Recognizing that “all politics is local”, the SATP is concerned how some city and county elected officials ignore the will of governed because they know what is best for the governed. Examples of this attitude have been seen in the mayor and city council’s vote to extend employee benefits to cover domestic partners and the renaming of Durango Street. In both cases overwhelming opposition was ignored.

Bexar County officials have also shown arrogance toward the public. At one county commissioners’ meeting on VIA’s mass transportation plans, Commissioner Paul Elizondo said “Texans need to give up their pickup trucks”. In yet another meeting on VIA, Elizondo said it was sad they (the commissioners) had to listen to public comments on an issue they (the commissioners) had already decided. Another example is how County Judge Nelson Wolff seems determined to build a trolley car system regardless of the fact that the public rejected the idea overwhelmingly in 2000.

The SATP is does not oppose public works projects as long as they are for the highest and best use of tax payer money. However, local politicians often attempt to confuse the tax payers by claiming that funds are not local but federal or state. People should remember that all public funding for the city, county, state and federal and even the school district, comes from “the public”, the tax payer. It’s all your money.

We must work to change the political culture of the city and county. The spending habits of local liberal politicians have not been challenged in recent years. Many have built monuments to themselves as evident by number of buildings that bear the name of living politicians. Bexar County has also been a spring board for liberal Hispanic politicians who become even bigger public spenders on the national stage.

In 2012, the SATP plans to build more study groups in neighborhoods throughout Bexar County, and plans to hold local elected officials accountable for their projects and public spending. The era of politicians buying votes with public funds must end. With our federal government $15 trillion in debt, does it make sense for local politicians to ask for or depend on federal funding?

The SATP has not disappeared, but rather evolved. It is a conservative grassroots organization that is not challenging grassroots liberals. It is best to attack the roots of liberals, before they bloom into the national level politicians that promote more public spending and dependence on the government.